Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Move Move

If only boxes can pack themselves...

Moving into the new house proved to be a great form of physical and mental exercise. Physical in the sense of moving around the furniture and packing up the endless amount of vases, picture frames and other knick knacks which I never thought my family had. And mental in terms of planning out where the old stuff should be to coincide peacefully with the new ones.

Another mental exercise I had to go through was going through the costs of moving and purchasing of new things. As the self-appointed accountant during this period, I realized that stuff for the house can be so damn expensive.

Now I understand why my parents had always gone through their sets of squabbles whenever we had to move house in the past. Because someone had to be the accountant and provide restraints, when the other one just wanted to get that designer chair for who knows where. This time my parents are smart. They left the headache to me, and I am squinting as they go “oh look, this should be nice for the house”.

Oh really???

After calculating the total costs, I realized that the egg nest my parents had set aside for purchasing goods for the new home was a little short. I told my parents this and recommended that they take a short term loan to cover some quick but much needed expenses like settling the 20% balance of installing the kitchen costs or the 10% balance for the new security system they had just installed. Unsurprisingly, they threw the Frisbee back to me and recommended that I take out the short term loan on their behalf.

What the???

So, a few Fridays back, I took the day off to go visit the nearby Standard Chartered bank to apply for a short term loan for my family. The consultant named Jeslyn calculated openly my net worth and reviewed the details in my spending.

“Do you have any other loans?” she asked.

No. No car loans. No house loans. Just credit cards. So, basically, I am a loan virgin. Hahaha.

She did not laugh. “You pay on time?”

Always.

“Okay.” Calculate calculate calculate.

I was staring at a plant on her table when suddenly she said, “Wow, you personal trainers make a lot of money, huh?”

I looked at her blankly when she added, “Which gym do you work at?”

Gym? Did she just say gym?

I’m sorry, I said with all seriousness. I am not a personal trainer. I am a brand analyst at a very good company!

I look at her dead in the eye, insulted that she thought I was a him-bo. Sheesh! But perhaps it was the loan virgin joke that made her think that way? To cover it up, I began to detail my job experiences, the seriousness of my job scope, because damn it, I wanted her to take me seriously.

“We will call you when the loan has been approved,” she said. And just like that, I left the bank with the biggest dent to my ego.